Acrylic resins are excellent in light stability, have beautiful appearances and good optical transparency, and can be molded easily. They have therefore been widely used in, for example, parts of electric appliances, car parts, optical parts, ornaments, and signboards. With increasing uses, investigations have been made to further improve performance of such acrylic resins. Under these circumstances, demands have been made to positively use acrylic resins as replacements for plasticized poly(vinyl chloride)s in thin molded articles such as films and sheets. These thin molded articles are used in consideration of cost reduction. The replacement is intended, for example, to avoid or reduce the load to the environment when such plasticized poly(vinylchloride)s are discarded by incineration. Current acrylic resins, however, are susceptible to improvements, because they have high hardness and are limited in their uses. For example, films and sheets including acrylic multiphase structured polymer particles are provided (see, for example, Patent Documents 1 and 2). These films and sheets eliminate the need of use of such hard acrylic resins directly as molding materials. The films disclosed in these documents, however, are molded articles derived from acrylic multiphase structured polymer particles alone and are poor in tear strength. Certain thermoplastic elastomer compositions include thermoplastic polymers in addition to acrylic multiphase structured polymer particles, but they are still susceptible to improvements in tear strength when molded into films (see, for example, Patent Document 3).
Patent Document 1: Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (JP-A) No. S58-215443
Patent Document 2: Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (JP-A) No. S59-86650
Patent Document 3: Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (JP-A) No. H09-216967